I live, I die, I live again
by Athoriaal
Summary: Over the hours, strange whispers have echoed through the Wasteland. It is said that the three Leaders have just died on the Fury Road, even Immortan Joe whom the Citadel held for a god. Volta is a Buzzard, she came to scavenge the copper from the stranded tank. She will find more than metal there: a War Boy at the end of his half-life.
1. The copper of the War-rig

How many ? How many days have passed since the Fall, which is called_ Apokalipsis down bellow under-the-sands ? _Eighteen thousand, it is said, even if the amounts of time are much harder to handle than those of bolts. It is more – in any case – much more than most half-lives can claim to have experienced.

What did these lands look like before the desert consumed them? Before the electric winds swept away what the Oil and Water Wars had saved? The Wasteland keep traces of it, like so many marks on a mutilated body. Inert things that the ancients call _Derev'ya – trees – still raise their cracked messy branches for crows. Words are still whispered, legends:_ those of the _Boeings_, winged giants that one day crossed the sky, those of black-grease grounded _Highways_. Fables. Abstruse symbols that still litter the ground where the carcasses of fallen vehicles lie. There on the Fury Road.

Once his engine is off, Volta scrapes the sand with the tip of her boot. _Ford_. Another badge she already has. Twice. Thrice. She's sure to catch a glimpse of a Chevrolet bumper, deeper into this mess of rubble. Quickly, she raises her goggled, rimmed in leather, up to the shapeless dirty scarf that covers her head. Then she picks up the metal thing. it's half burnt but still better than -

A whistle, and she looks up. At the canyon top, the Rockryders are leaving. Here is their territory, their rocky pass. Their toll point too, from which they greatly benefit because no convoy can afford to bypass the mountains. Their tax is paid in Guzzolene, Aquacola, Nestlait or Lectricity, but they will not ask anything this time. None of them will pay attention neither to her, nor to any of the Buzzards out of Sunken City, nor to their current looting: what was interesting or valuable to them, they have already taken. Now, they simply let them clear away the remnants of this never-seen-before pile of shattered machines.

— _Davaï_, Volta, yells one of her fellows in a voice that has already roared too much in the sound of engines.

The teenager makes a OK sign, her thumb and index finger closed in a circle. Novic. Leaving with a downpour of sand, a cluster of doors stacked on a pole at the front of his Staryytako. Right among the sharp spikes of his car. !in less than an hour, he will have melted it: Volta knows it and she stretches a smile under the harsh linen. The Buzzards – the _Kanyuk _as they call themselves – are not reusing the parts they collect – sometimes by scavenging, sometimes by deliberately attacking desperate convoys crossing their northern territories. They stopped giving a second life to the pieces of the Old World a long time ago: now they create their own universes from scratch. Rims, hoods, axles have only one name: _Metall_. A raw material like any other, from which they shape their burried city and their other facilities.

Volta comes from most distant colony and maybe that's why her clan somewhat differs from the other Buzzards tribes. An enclave. Hidden underground under the chaos of the eternal storm sweeping the borders of their grounds. A series of bunkers buried in the midst of windy tumults, of which only lightning rods protrude into this hell of sand and ocher. Of all the Buzzards, of all the souls that still breathe in the Wasteland, the Iskra are the only ones who know how to catch lightning. To constrain it or release it from what everyone call _batteries_. The are also the only ones who know how to use the infinity of sand that sums up their existence. To blow the _Stekloglass_. To shape bulbs inside which they breathe light from their Lectricity. This is their only trade with the Citadel, with Gastown, with the Bullet Farm. The reason why they gibberish this mixture of English and Russian better than the other Buzzards. The way they supply their engines with Guzzolene and their offspring with water.

Volta lifts the badge up to her eyes and look at it. Blue, with orange shimmers in the sunset. Why does she like these stupid things ? She is not about to melt them: she will simply slip them into the box which fits under her berth. She doesn't know. Keeping them is a reflex, a mechanical gesture that calms her down amid the roars of the storm, when back to the Bunkers. A _kollektsiya_, as the eldest Iskra would say. A useless fad that she will keep secret forever. But yet, she pockets the _Ford_, then shakes her head and focus on what she came for.

She gets out of her motorcycle and rummages through her packs for a moment. From the big bag thrown on her sidecar she gets her tools and looks around. What she will look for in the midst of this rugged disaster – what she will seek from the disembowelled carcass of the huge War-rig still dripping with aqueous and milky substances – already shines in the last rays of the sun. _Copper_. For her know-how is undoubtedly the most precious of all those of the Iskra, even if she is still _an almost-kid_.

For a moment, she stops and check one last time the canyon is Rockrider-free. In the rubble of the cliff, she can hear the circular saw of Yegor and Zaveta. The noise stops, and now there is only the echoes of nothingness in the carcasses of the pass. Her dagger is at her boot and her batch of small grenades – no bigger than her fist – on her belt. She blinks, then climbs into the torn metal of the huge black tanker, lying full length like a colossal beast. Its side is open, and the entire inner surface of its main tank, from its head to its tail, shines, plated with copper.

— _Molniya_, she whispers to herself. The Rockriders have no idea what treasure they had under their eyes.

With feet together, she jumps inside the rig tank, where a bottom of water scatters the dust of her undersoles. She throws her tools aside to a dry place on an unbelievable accordion of crumpled metal, then she unhooks her water bottle from the leather straps on her chest. No opportunity should be lost. She fills it and drinks, not caring about the long streaks of oil that slide everywhere in this smoking cemetery.

Over the hours, strange whispers have echoed, the reason why she went out for this scavenging. It is said that the three Leaders have just died on the Fury Road. The People-eater, the Bullet Farmer, and even Immortan Joe whom the Citadel held for a god. It is rumored that his remains were deposited at the gates of his troglodyte city by his Imperator Furiosa. An absurdity that leaves all souls incredulous, even the Buzzards who wished such events a thousand times. Now, Volta is siphoning the already bloodless remains of this dismembered armada, as a witness: this new _Apokalipsis_ is real. And in this hell of _Metall,_ bodies lie just like engine parts, their blood mixing with Guzzolene, right to the thirsty grounds.

For the Buzzards, flesh is nothing but meat, but they would never taste the Citadel Way Boys. Those dead ones, on this very morning were still alive: the most madly fast, the most absurdly reckless, the most fanatically dedicated to their Immortan Joe. The sickest too, no doubt, because on the verge of their imminent death, ravaged by lymphomas and night fevers, they had nothing in mind but to die heroic to see the doors of glory open. Eating this is directly swallowing death, so Volta looks away from an anonymous rib cage. She brings her eyes back inside the open rig and grabs a sharp tool, half scraper and half chisel. Then she begins to cut a long strip of copper while the breeze returns. A screeching rises, plaintive, overcoming the further howls of the circular saws. She rolls her first sheet of copper, stuffs it into her satchel, then begins to cut a second one.

The tool squeaks again and she stops, frowning, having this growing feeling of being tearing alive a dying creature. Suddenly, she feels something deep and suffocating for this war-rig. Something the eldest Iskra would call _sostradánije_ – compassion – before spitting on the ground. Volta swears, one of these interjections in russian that come spontaneously. That testify of her ancestors history. No. She's not going to feel sorry for a damn tank. She presses harder on its tool which sinks faster and further into the inner lining of the rig. A terrible scrap lament rises, and she looks away.

She freezes and the noise stops, leaving her in the only sound of the ample breath she has taken. Motionless. Vigilant. In the corner of her eye, she has just caught a glimpse of _something_. There, beyond a breach of razor-sharp metal, against the steep and burnt stone, something has just moved, no doubt.

A blink and her dagger is in front of her. A niddle, sharp as a thorn, forged from the same mechanics that once rumbled on the Road. She is ready to crawl back. To throw one of her quarter-grenades at anything. Now she is standing in the tank water and the complaint rises again. A pathetic moan. Not coming from the War-rig itself but from its close surroundings. She climbs quite high, on what was once the massive side of this eighteen-wheeled vehicule. At a distance, on her guard, culminating above the remains of what was a few hours behind the rig fore-cabin.

Raising an eyebrow, crossing her arms, she assesses the place and shivers. Just below her, half under the folds of the tanker and half hidden in a recess of stone which undoubtedly smasehd him as much as it saved his life, lies a War Boy who does not seem as hopelessly dead as the others. A wreck among the wrecks, not a threat, who will be nothing at all very soon.

— Nothing but raven food, spewed out by its Valhalla, she whispers, and her blade is away.

And while jumping back into the tank, about to start cutting again, she adds ironically as a revenge for all the harm his kind has historically done to her and her fellows on the Road :

— Mediocre, War Boy.


	2. The gates of Valhalla

That noise, again. Long. Endless. A squeak. The scraping of the hull against the cliff, again and again. Forever, perhaps. The flames died, replaced by dust. Dust everywhere. Tin everywhere. Rocks everywhere. The buzzing of blood flow, the crunching, long, long. Darkness. And that pain, like no other. Like nothing, never, and yet. Where are the Gates? The bloody _smegging_ Gates? Did they open for the other War Boys? For Rictus? Are there any Gates at the end? No, there aren't. Only this buzzing. Only pain. And the squealing, again, again, again.

Suddenly the War Boy opens his eyes and feels the dust. Under his eyelids, in his mouth, in his nostrils. The fucking dust. And that orange light. From the returning flames? No, they didn't come back. It's just the sun, so low. Sand. Rocks. Cliffs. The Pass. The War-rig close to him, on the top of him. Everywhere too. And the pain again. _Mediocre_? What does it matter if there are no Gates?

Breathe. Several more times, and he doesn't care about Larry and Barry. In the end, it also doesn't matter the dust even if it makes him cough. Cough. Coughing hurts more than usual. And that squeak, will it stop? The War-rig isn't moving anymore, so why is it still scraping the canyon? Why is it squealing? This must stop. IT MUST.

— STOP!

The scraping disappears and only the bumblebee remains at the drums of his ears. He needs to cough again. Air in the windpipe, in, out, several times. Behind the buzzing is silence now. Have the others passed through? Before he turned the rig down. Before darkness. How long ago? Now the sun is low. Have they been caught up? Maybe they -

— If you get up, you'll empty faster, _durachit'_.

Up there, someone is looking at him. A small shape. Brown. Fuzzy. With his blackened hand – the one not in the War-rig's metal fractals – the haggard War Boy is looking for something to throw at her. Anything. _Durachit'_. Not _slang_, but _soviet_.

— You're a buzzard, he whispers as one would utter an umpteenth misfortune, and he hears her laugh.

He gropes again and he knows what she's thinking. She's thinking that he can't threaten her. A randomly picked up doorknob crashes miserably into the side of the tank and she's laughs again very low. Another thing: rod, bone, this time it's the gearshift lever with a selector sharpened like a blade that goes towards her boot and finally ricochets off. He counter-steers quickly, so as not to be dazed on top of everything else. He says a Black Thumb swearword from the Citadel, and she crouches down, ready to dodge the next projectile. But he can't anymore. Stalled, dry. And that pain, again. He falls back and just breathes. And again. And again.

— Damn, she whispers, you're really made of hard-bending wires.

She disappears and the screeching comes back. Shears? A scraper? The War-rig. It's the War-rig she's cutting out. He pulls on his arm and something dislodges from his shoulder as he pulls it away from the hull. Another pain. He breathes, also ignoring that leg that doesn't respond. The buzzard cuts, she cuts, and suddenly he understands as the vision of the red metal pulls his entrails back. Red and shiny, so shiny, more chrome than any other colour. _Copper_. His vision almost blurs again. It is the inside of the tank that she's peeling off.

Suddenly, there are two more voices and he hides there. More Buzzards. She tells them she's going to stay. They call her Volta. She wants to get all copper? As much as possible? Night's coming and the breeze is up. Russian words again. She doesn't want their circular saw and he gets a silly relief. They're leaving. One engine, traction, 11 hp. One of those damn raiders' Barbacons. It's heading far away towards the Badlands. To the edge of the Storm Dunes. And further, there is the Citadel.

All of a sudden, he feels this eagerness, similar to the greed that arise at the moment of taking the Road. While waiting for the Day. Once an act of blind devotion, of despair maybe, but know things have changed. He's got to go. To the Citadel. He wants to know. To know if they're there. And the _Wives_. He pushes on his hip, but his leg is a painful injection when he tries. There's blood down there, and it's not the War-rig's. This time, the squeal that repeats makes him turn his head with a different look. Back to himself, he figures out he'ss a motionless, crumpled thing while this Volta is motorized and armed. Threatening her to force her to take him would be most effective, but she has already laughed at his shots. He would need a weapon. There was a Webbley left in the cabin. And a Smith & Wesson, and... but now the cabin merges with rock. For a moment, his head still sways a little on the sand. Then it stops.

— One night in the canyon, he forces himself to say, checking if his voice still exists. Just for scavenging shotgun.

The squealing stops but she doesn't answer him.

— The welds on the FDK, on the Doof Wagon : they're mad of lead, some of tin. In the grenades, _boom_, that would make a good sifting. Would be easier to cut than-

— You talk too much. Die in silence.

He won't talk for a while. The tool resumes its work and the War Boy forces himself to turn in her direction, behind the wall of the tanker. He pulls himself up like dead weight and his leg spins. He coughs again, just as if it had anything to do with it.

— Lead, in organics, he says, it spits toxic when it's ingrained. The copper is shiny but for your shotgun-

— This copper is not for shotgun, now shut up.

Something in the Buzzard's voice seems sorry to slash the rig, and he is silent for a moment. But now he feels like he's come to his senses. If he can't threaten her, he knows now, he knows what he still can do.

— It's for the batteries.

— No.

— It's for the inside of the catalytic converters.

— No. No, it's not.

Her exasperation can be heard through the rig's metal. But if she kills him, so what? Leaving him there would be worse. He breathes in again.

— It's for the spikes, the ones on the hoods of your fuckin' car-

A step in the water, the sound of her boots. Within a second she's on him, just where the V8 has been rammed. He's moaning as her tool points at his head and no more at copper. Her other hand is thrust into his shoulder. Loose, limp as if the strap of it had snapped, and the pain makes him clench his teeth. Her chin is buried in her windproof scarf but he can guess. At least she's looking at him now, and her eyes are black.

— Before being a Driver, I worked at the Garages, I know the-

— _Blin, ZATKNIS_' !

He doesn't understand, but he gets the idea. So she raises her shears and presses a little more on his shoulder: she noticed that it's an efficient spot. One kick and she tackles him. How can he do better, anyway? But suddenly she stops. One breath, another, and she looks around. At the rig. At the Immortan Howling Skull hammered on the old ceiling of the cabin. The old, torn leather of the back sits. She's figured something out.

— It was you, she says, pressing the tool on his forehead and the blade scraps his skin. It was you who drove that tanker.

That's absurd. Of course she knows. A War Boy would never drive a loaded War-rig. He can see she doesn't get it. But who would understand what all this madness is about? Explaining wouldn't help, and he has to hurry. He's moved. Like she said, he's moved too much. Blood in the sand. It's her fault even if he went looking for it. But now his eyesight is blurred and he must finish what he started.

— Take me back.

Under the pressure of the tool, his neck collapses. He won't be able to hold on.

— Take me back to the Citadel and you can ask for much more than copper.

The tool goes a little deeper. Maybe she's killing him. Maybe the War-rig falls apart, the War Boy doesn't know anymore. Darkness is coming from the sides, from the center, with this loud, loud hum. He's sliding again. And now he knows there are no Gates to Valhalla.


	3. A hard nut to crack

On the walls of the cave, light flows in a reverse liquid way: accumulating on the reliefs, disappearing into the cavities. It flickers as if it were going to fade out at any moment, and yet the bulb continues to shine at the end of the long double-wire that connects it to Volta's battery. A sudden gesture and her hook is planted in the stone above her head. The rock crumbles. The suspended bulb swings and the light spins until it reaches the entrance of her shelter. Outside, the day is almost dead and the heat too.

With some kind of precaution, she removes the fabric strips that protect her from the sand, the prerogative of the Buzzards. The strips of her arms, those of her legs and those of her head, including her scarf, wet of her breath and sweat. Of these traveling clothes, she owns only one set. Against the wall, she has stored the large bag of copper coils looking like an ossuary. And next to it, she has thrown the War Boy.

She did what she could to stem the bleeding in his leg. The most important thing since all she wants to do is to deliver him. She doesn't know how many ribs of his frame he has cracked, how many pieces his leg actually is. The burns are difficult to distinguish from the rest, and his shoulder has more or less repositioned itself while she was transporting him. Now, he also has a long scratch of copper-shear on the top of his white forehead. He has not powdered himself for several days, this is obvious, and the only black marks he has are under his nose and around his eyes. A very end of a half-life, that will pass away in two days if he's not transfused. If he's lucky. The extent of the grease paintings is significant for War Boys, Volta has seen enough of them to know. The less they have, the more dangerous they become, because they are so close to the end of the road.

— I'd better hurry up tomorrow, she whispers as she pulls her bag up to her knees, but her eyes are still on him: finally, he seems to regain consciousness.

She's taking a risk by doing this: even half open, even almost dead, he's shown good reflexes earlier. He's certainly worth even more than he bragged about. If the rumors are true, at the Citadel, only remain War Boys unfit to fight. And War Pups, so immature their arms cannot even raise the hood of a car. All the others have been used as tire and cannon fodder, in this rabid attempt to get she-doesn't-even-know-what back. The word _war_ is enough to describe it all, anyway. They'll probably want to patch this one up, despite he probably has very little intrinsic time left to live. She has no doubt that she will indeed be rewarded. In the meantime, her dagger remains at her side.

As he rolls his head on the wall, she digs into the side pockets of her bag and pulls out another piece of copper. A long, tapered rod that will require little work. She has made her own manual wire-drawing machine, and feels it as an extension of her arm. It will only take her a few moments to get her second light bulb working again. Bite, pull, blow the dust away, over and over. The Way Boy has opened his eyes. With that blue, he's probably had a lot to deal with in the reverberation.

He looks at his leg, tries to take a deep breath – which fails – and then he seems to focus on where he is. The ochre colour of the rock won't fool him: they are still in Rockrider territory, however facing the plain. On the outer edge of the Pass. She had a hard time dragging him in there, but the copper bag was even heavier. Even though she's concentrating on her work, she knows that he's assessing the situation. If he starts throwing anything at her again, including her copper coils, she will finish him off and decide that the reward is not worth the trouble.

— What are you doing?, he says.

Volta focuses and doesn't look at him anymore.

— It doesn't matter.

— That's wire.

— You're not going to start that chatting again.

She knows that the War Boys are a flock of loudmouths, and that only the most _bogan-crazy_ and impulsive ones can hold on long enough to grow two lymphomas like these. Having to saw off a few of these devotees on the Road is one thing. But having to bear one of them for a night is worse than a nail in the tire. She pinches the copper, then pulls hard on her wire which splits into three filaments. A cubit long, thinner than the last yellow grass. With her fingertips, she twists them into a tight braid, and then – from her little toolbox – she pulls out her needle. A sudden breath, and she feels her talkative burden just squeezed against her copper bag.

— Once already, not twice.

— Huh?

The thin copper braid passes through the eye of the needle.

— I've already been sewn up. Once before. Not a second time.

Volta's unclenched hands freeze for a moment, the triple thread in the middle of the metal loop of his coarse _stitches-splinter_. She looks at the striated hatching of his lips, encrusted with chrome scraps. She had mistaken that for another morbid or mechanical scarification, but – no doubt – he's not telling _vran'ye_. The thread goes on and she pulls it back, her needle ready.

— I'm not going to sew you up. But – _chert voz'mi _– I swear I can understand the people who did this to you.

She sends her right hand into her bag and pulls out a bulb base made from the last cork in this world. Rare. Grey and smooth by dint of being rubbed, crossed from side to side by two coated threads which come to loop at the exit. Honestly, if she had to put up with such a windbag in the garages, she might have considered throwing him overboard, down to the rubble at the foot of their Citadel. It's bad luck, but she'll have to make do. She's well aware that even at the end of everything, this War Boy will run with his mouth wide open. In the meantime, if she wants him to last another day, she'll have to make him at least a quarter fill.

— There's water next to you.

With her chin, she points to the wineskin on his right. Now, the copper braid is stretched over the top of the cork, and she unwraps another object. A transparent bulb made of uneven glass, already brushed by the sand.

— We don't care if it hurts, she adds. Force yourself.

A wrist rotation and the light bulb is closed. She doesn't have her vacuum machine but never mind. Then, her hand runs up the double wire and reach the electric box to which the first bulb is already connected. The battery hums in the cramped cave, and this white noise is somewhat reassuring._ Click_. The second bulb lights up like a little sun in the middle of the scorched filament. Volta seems satisfied. And from a new hook above the War Boy's head, she hangs the fruit of her brief labour.

— Good, she says sitting back down, replacing the small box on her lap with another one, twice as big and black.

— You know how to make _light wires_, stutter the War Boy, and she doesn't need to confirm the obvious.

No doubt, he has already seen some of the bulbs made by her people. Maybe by herself. All the light bulbs in the Citadel come from the Iskra, exchanged for litres of Aquacola. Maybe he saw their batteries too since he mentioned them earlier. Maybe he even installed one on a vehicle he drove. Volta lifts up her box and looks through a translucent piece on its side.

— Requires little fingers, she tells him, and she notices that he is examining her for the first time from a different angle than the one of her shears or needle.

— You lived... You're less than six thousand day old.

— So what.

She stares at him, ready to open her box as he grabs the wineskin and ends up drinking. Does he always talk like this, in this _start and stop_ way? He thinks like that too, probably. Volta shrugs her shoulders.

— At least I still have a few left.

Maybe as much as she's already lived, who knows. At the moment, she only has those spots on her skin that don't even seem to be growing that fast. The War Boy blinks. Volta can feel that what she said doesn't hit metal. And then she opens her black box from which a dozen big moths escape. Grey-brown, hairy, with ring patterns.

— You really missed a great opportunity, she says, and she doesn't know why she's going on with this conversation. A Tatra T815 passes you by, then all this multiple crash _bingle_. You've got at least half a dozen cracks in the ribs and you're still here.

_A hard nut to crack._

— I don't give a shit.

This answer wrinkles Volta's dark eyes.

— You, you don't _give a shit_.

He's a War Boy, caught up in obviously historic events, and he doesn't care that he didn't die heroic? Finally, he must have blown his brains out in the Pass, what else?

Silence sets in and butterflies come flying around the two light bulbs, just above their noses. Frenetically. Irrepressibly attracted by the light that possesses them as others are alienated by water or speed. Volta catches up with the wineskin: she won't let him siphon it off. Then, raising her finger in the direction of the blinded insects – wriggling above the large scar that bars the War Boy's face following the shape of goggles too often worn near storms – she says to him as an order:

— Eat.


	4. The kimbersnake

Her brown strips of cloth are on Volta's head, and only her goggles come out. Wrapped around and around. On her legs, on her arms. Under the poison dart at her belt. She's a Buzzard even if she's an Iskra. In his back, Nux can fell the copper coils, now in three bags stacked on top of each other. When she dropped him into the sidecar, the foot of his useless leg narrowly missed a case of grenades. Sharp-edged. If they don't explode, they spin and shread. The wind is already warm, burning the hull of her Ural sidecar motorcycle. Tumbled-engined, with a six hundred cylinder-capacity at least and thirty-six hp. So much modified, rebuilt, redesigned: you can only guess it if you know already. _Chrome_. He's sitting next to a Buzzard, he can barely believe it. Usually he's _facing_ them.

— Stop being happy, _glupyy_.

He stops smiling and clears his throat. He knows this word means _dumb_, that's what Morsov used to call him.

— Nux.

— Whatever.

Maybe she hasn't even realized that this is his name. In her side-bags, she's organizing her tools. And her light bulbs. And the wineskin. She buckles the straps, she puts on her gloves. She doesn't want to talk any more, she just wants him to stay alive. She's given him water and those greasy butterflies. Not to be nice, just for the _refill_. She wants him to last until the finish line. He's just like the copper bag to her: material. But well. Before their departure, she let him pee so maybe she's caring a little. Unless she did it for her sidecar sit? That's okay. As long as she delivers him.

— Are you going to pass by the Storms?

The ones spinning around, always in the same place. Not the ones sweeping across the desert. The Iskras know them well. They use them. But she doesn't answer.

— Are you going along the mountains outer side?

The wind, on the dune, slides as if it were crawling on it.

— You're not going to get too close to Gastown, are you ?

— Shut the fuck up, _Nux_.

All of a sudden, she gives the Ural gas and its wheels spin, spin in the sand. Dust rises up as a cloud, pity his own goggles are lost somewhere under the War-rig. The Ural shows all it's capable of. It's a good bike, but it's at least 200 pounds, empty. They are two people and the copper weighs like a third one. The engine gives everything but they can't move. They just cough from Guzzolene and dust.

— _Pizdetz_.

She swears. A break, another try, but it's in vain. Pushing would work but his leg is useless. She stops. She's thinking. She looks at the sidecar. At him. At the copper coils. He's got it : she's considering throwing him away. Leaving him behind. She's...

— Right ahead!

At once, she turns the lenses of her goggles at what he just spotted. Through the falling dust. She forces her gaze, and he feels her tensing up. A shape stirs, blurred in the silica cloud. Then it becomes sharper and sharper. Lying down. Fluid. Armored. Reptilian. A shiver goes up the back of his neck.

That's the tail of a _kimbersnake_. Maybe drawn to the mass-grave of the vehicules pile-up.

After the radiation, the deadly vipers have crawled further south. A long, long time ago. They've gotten bigger and bigger, they fit to desert. They don't just eat the scarce birds anymore. The lizards. A man feeds them for several weeks. Four metres long. Ring-like muscles that can lift a Mack-R tow truck, Nux's seen that before. They hunt on the prowl. Smart, dangerous. Their tail is a decoy. Always. It dances, dances.

The head is in their backs, probably from the beginning.

— Your arm! Back in!

A sharp traction, and Volta lifts a lever on the side of the Ural. Suddenly, the entire body of the bike and the sidecar bristles with Buzzard spikes. A ball of tawny nails, as long as an arm, stuck on a K301 carb. Nux lets out a cry of joy. _Glory be_. And to think he might have missed that. Volta doesn't have time to yell at him for his absurd enthusiasm. She crushes the ignition and throttles, throttles again in a new haze of dust. They're too heavy. Way too much. Nux turns around : above them, the diamond-shaped head is rising. Wide. Even through the dust, he can see its eyes.

No thinking. The copper bag – the one on top – goes overboard, rolls over the spikes and crashes as the Ural tears off the dune. The wheel studs resist, they finally ramp up thanks to this providential lightening, and Volta turns to avoid the tail. The head attacked right where they stood before. Then the long, long body of the snake emerges, sand flowing over its moving scales like the waterfalls of the Citadel. Shiny. Red. They move forward but the kimbersnake is swooping down, so Nux grabs the next copper bag.

— No way !

Volta's voice is distorted by her scarf, but her elbow crushes him on the bag as she counter-brakes. Sharp. Right on the mark of the Immortan. She strikes a second time then gets her hand back and speed up. The motorcycle pulls away from the arc formed by the snake, which immediately changes strategy and now slides behind them._ Quick venom, slow snake_. They say that at the Citadel. This one's no sloth and Nux doesn't want to know about its poison. They're not moving fast themselves. Not fast enough. But Volta has other assets.

Again, she leans over the sidecar and grabs a grenade from the case, which she arms by locking the pin on a hook on her handlebars. She opens a tube. She throws the grenade in and closes it shut. At the back of the motorcycle, the object is spit out with tenfold inertia. The grenade goes off. Straight back. A brilliant device, but it doesn't allow you to aim. The sand explodes next to the snake's head which barely makes a gap. It's suing them, even faster. With no legs. Nux can't figure out how.

— Insane!, he gloats as he bends over.

Volta rides along the mountains and uses low outcrops to make the beast clash. On this more stable ground, the Ural rushes like a tornado. The kimbersnake is spitting like an out-of-date breech, but it doesn't give up. Nux's head dodelines. Always, always when he thinks too much. His loose shoulder – at least – is not on his directing side. He's got enough strength for a while. So he leans back towards the case and ignores his knee. His ribs. On the road, you never feel anything. Blood, at that speed, is pure octane and nothing else. He grabs a grenade and prepares to pull the pin out with his jaws.

— What are you doing ?

Between his bicuspids, the pin stays.

— You're driving. I can be the one _lancing_.

_Five seconds_. Even if he only sees her dark googles over her strips, he can feel her looking at him. The mountain goes by and by, and the kimbersnake crawls around the low peaks._ Three seconds. _Nux turns around and takes aim._ One second. _The grenade hurtles backwards and the sidecar jolts on a stone. Against the snake's parietal, the projectile explodes. The animal rolls to its side and curls up to get back on track. Some of its scales are lost and it's angrier than ever. Nux has swung into the sidecar, toward the two remaining copper bags. Another grenade is in his hand above the Buzzard spikes. He laughs, this time loud, with real exhilaration at the widely open fangs chasing them. With the dusty wind whipping his eardrums. Ignoring the lack of his goggles. If he could, he'd be standing.

— Seriously, do you still take this hellhole for a party?, throws Volta through the howls of the air they're splitting, while she heads northwestward towards the windy convections at the fringes of the Storm Dunes.

Nux takes the pin out of the grenade, sends it up the animal's nostrils. The projectile coughs, then start spinning. It slices, it shreds. Devilishly effective even if it's dull. Anyway, he's already got the next one ready. The kimbersnake is doubting, he can see it. It's doubting that he still wants to eat them. But the snake tries one last time. It gives all his tank bottom to shorten the distance again. Admirable, shiny and chrome. So is this hellhole a party?

— In the end every day is worth it!

Volta gazes at the horizon ahead as he takes the pin out again. _Five seconds_. She's veering towards a runway in the distance. _Four seconds_, she hesitates for the last time. _Three seconds_, she's turned around on her seat. _Two seconds_. One kick. One _second_. At the same time as the grenade flies, the second bag of copper falls in their wake. In the open mouth of the kimbersnake, the blast rumbles like V8s to the echoes of the Garages. The copper scatters out of the bag. Everywhere. A blend of coils and _Metall_.

Now the Ural's going. Going. To the Citadel?

In the belly, it's better a thousand moths.


	5. Under the raging storm

In the desert, distances are never what they seem. What looks close moves away – far away – when approached, and lengths can only be counted in time. They've reached the runway at last, after it had slipped away many times, and Volta sensed Nux's disappointment when he realized that it was not the Citadel's. He's no fool, and he was a Black Thumb before being a driver. He's understood that the Ural needed to cool down. He's also understood that she wanted to lighten up again and dump the rest of her copper under cover.

He didn't say anything about that. Because as for the rest, he seems constitutionally unable of keeping his mouth shut, exhausted or not. Sometimes Volta is sent to the Citadel because – without their strips and barely ragged – the immature Iskra make good spies. She has already witnessed the departure of the convoys, grotesquely ceremonial. She has seen the water of the Aquifer, meagrely delivered from the heights of the First Rock Tower of Immortan Joe, onto the bloated crowd of The Wretched. And she watched the War Boys come down. With their vehicles, on the platforms. The _Fuk'ushima Kami-crazy_ War Boys, their half-lives gnawed to the bone, taking the Fury Road like one would go to a devout festival. This one has this enthusiastic fatalism, this absurdly mischievous adrenaline. A battle-thing, pertinently selected for his euphoria in the face of death. Now he's looking north. Is he really so greedy for what he'll find there?

— You're going back to the Storm, he suddenly notices as she complete a wide arc, but she doesn't reply because the answer is yes.

The entrances of the auxiliary Bunkers of the Burried City are always hidden this way: turned towards the tumult of the eternal Storms because nobody ever comes from that direction. Invisible in the meanders of the lands. They ride, ride, until lightnings strike behind their backs. The Storm. Filling the whole sky. And finally, they reach a metal porch between the rocks, facing the chaos. From beyond the gate worn out by the sandy winds, Volta brings back a kind of wheelbarrow where the copper, her battery and Nux are thrown. The Ural is slid into a shelter between the rocks, a narrow space carved to the exact shape of the sidecar. Now the vehicule is a stone among the stones.

— We'll only be here for a short time. Just what's necessary.

There may be eyes on this place, allies and enemies alike. Volta pushes the pitching wheelbarrow and Nux clings to the side as daylight dies in the tunnel.

— What an amazing ride, he says as they move along, and Volta wonders if he's capable of sarcasm.

She moves forward, for several minutes. Under her feet, the ground has been terraced by the weight of many narrow tanks. In the dark, only the strings of Moths larvae can be seen. Weakly bioluminescent garlands of fat worms. With one move, she snatches one off and sends it down into the wheelbarrow. This tastes better than mature Moths, he'll experience it as he eats them. The pupae burst, bitter, juicy. She sees him gloating. Finally, they go through another door, and the walls around are plated with _Metall_. Above them, the rocky ground shakes with a rumbling, louder than forty V8 engines. A sound like that of the Cataclysm, Volta always thought, even though she was born long afterwards.

— We're... underneath the storm, stammers the War Boy.

— Look.

In a shrill squeal of scrap metal, Voltra pulls a large telescopic tube down from the ceiling. The binocular of a gyroscope, in which she checks something. An automatism, accomplished before letting Nux reach for the eyelets as far as his cracked ribs will allow. What he sees and that cuts off his speech for a moment, Volta herself ended up finding it beautiful. Up there, the horizon no longer exists. There is only the raging storm, the revolt of the winds, the blurry orange light arched by blue electric arcs. Lethal. There, the Bunker roof seems to be the only stable thing. And – planted on top of it – swings the fragidly indestructible pole of one of the Iskra lightning rods.

— Brilliant, he says as she pushes the galvanized steel wheelbarrow again, forcing him to let go of the observatory.

In front of them, in the rather large container that constitutes the main room of this underground facility, stands a colossal electrical cabinet with humming coils, just below a complex transformer capable of taming the raw energy of lightning. In the chiaroscuro, numerous orange lights blink and multiple crackles combine to compete with the muffled thunder. Volta presses a switch. On the ceiling, a constellation of bulbs lights up. Their filaments, she has braided them all with her own fingers.

— _Chrome_, opines Nux as she pours him to a black bench half embedded in the wall, before discharging the copper and going away to plug her empty battery on a stud.

Right next, a dozen other batteries are in charge and she picks up one that flashes green. She pulls it into the wheelbarrow. And then, with a wide gesture, she opens a cupboard made of the same metal as the Ural's hood. There, she digs around for a while and finally takes out several objects made of plates and articulated rods. On the bench, they fall with a sound of scrap metal, but the storm – above – soon takes over.

— What's that?, Nux asks with a kind of uneasiness, not common with him.

She guesses he's never seen one: War Boys are either alive or dead. They're never broken.

— I won't be able to carry you when we get to the Citadel. You must stand.

Prosthetic splints. Which would have put him on his feet even if he only had one stump left. The one that fits him, she'll get it back once she delivers him. While she finds the right one, she guesses that he's thinking about something and she doesn't know what it is.

— It' s just a quick fix, she says. Just for the time needed. Anyway, there's no point in doing more, is there?

Under her hands that buckle the straps, that tighten the transverse pieces of metal, she feels no resistance. Almost no body tone. He gave it all up when the kimbersnake was on their tail, now he's got almost nothing left in the tank. She pulls, hard, to tighten the splint as it were part of the intact bones above the broken pieces. She gives him time to drain the pain. She rips out the fragments of black tissue, lacerated in the crash. And then she asks, forcing on her screwdriver:

— How long did you have to live before that?

He's hesitating. If he doesn't want to answer, it won't make a difference. Still, he rises to sit a little more dignified, while a lightning bolt is caught by the lightning rod above them in a crack of the sky.

— A _blood-bag_, he says. I've been plugged... three days ago. It'd be over by now otherwise. Maybe. Definitely.

He hesitated about time, as if all this had happened in another existence. Volta believes it. All of it. The truth is that without another such transfusion, what was imminent – what has just been delayed – will come to pass. And rumor has it that all the blood bags have been released from the Citadel, just like the other prisoners. She takes the wrench and he retrieves the screwdriver. Then he begins to coat the tip of it with the black grease that lubricates the mechanics of the splint.

— Larry and Barry, he says as she frowns. They're jerks.

She watches him use his screwdriver as an improvised brush, retracing without even being able to see them two faces on the pair of lymphomas growing at his neck. Four eyes, two mouths. Like he's done this a hundred times. And he keeps saying they're jerks.

— They don't get that when I'm done, they'll be done too.

Volta lets him finish, then turns around and sends the oversized splints back to the metal cabinet. She's seen his fever the night before, similar to the one that took her mother away. At least he's factual: one more will be one too many.

— You still want to go back to the Citadel, she says because she can't understand, even though she shouldn't care. Immortan Joe's dead, and you won't even get a pat on the back. You _don't give a shit_, you said. For real, you don't care if you go back and _die soft_ there ?

What War Boys usually fear the most, they who only seek the final act of heroic bravery, the fireworks of mechanics and bones that will mark the memory of their witnesses.

— I can die soft, he says, and she can see that he never thought he'd say that before either.

She's listening to him, but as she tightened the side bolts on the splint, she raised her nose towards the door. As if she heard something through the acoustic plague of the hurricane outside. Something other than the crackling of the batteries. He hasn't noticed.

— I can, he says again. I would. I know where and I know how.

— There's someome waiting for you there.

It's not even a question. Volta grabs the wheelbarrow again and puts it back against the edge of the seat. The transformers sizzle, but her attention shifts elsewhere. The noise in the tunnel. It just happened again and it's not a stone falling from the ceiling.

— No, she's certainly not waiting, she hears, on the lookout.

Volta doesn't need to know who _she_ is, and he's probably right: _she_ doesn't expect anything. The Pass, the War-rig, the dust, the _bingle_ as the Wasteland slang sums it up quite well. Nux shakes his head, as if it were off-center.

— I live, I die, I live again...

This enumeration is not finished, and it is Volta who completes it.

— You die gain, one last time.

She thinks that maybe their interests may not conflict, but the noise is coming back. She pulls him hard down into the wheelbarrow and moves towards the door in a defensive posture. This time, she has pulled her dagger and now she's waving it forward in the direction of the tunnel they came from. She swears very low in Russian, but then she whispers:

— We'll make it happen wherever you want.


	6. High-octane Babushka

Now Nux hears that noise too. Footsteps, for sure, with one more clap. Steady now. _Knock, knock, knack_. _Knock, knock, knack_. Three legs? He's never seen that before but anything is possible. He's crossed people with one more eye. Kids with lungs out. Deep down, nothing will surprise him anymore. Volta stands between the wheelbarrow and what's coming, so he can't see. She is tense but she breathes _calm_, _calm_. She knows. She knows what's coming.

— _Eto ya, Babushka_!, she says to the darkness of the corridor.

One second goes by, another. Suddenly, a metal spike runs low over his shoulder and crashes into the seat right behind him. A bolt from a small Buzzard crossbow, as long as his hand. No poison this time, he'd say. As Volta lowers her dagger and steps forward, he catches a glimpse of the humanoid who just walked into the bunker.

An old, old woman. Older than anyone else, leaning on an iron bar as if she were one of Gastown's Polecats, her weapon in her other hand. Proud. Tough. Wrinkly. Wrinkly. Dry as if her carcass had already been upwind for twenty days. If himself is only a half-life, she has lived at least three lifetimes. Old as a front-wheel drive car. He raises his two hands and the four rings of chain that remain at the infusion device on his right wrist make an honest rattle.

— Easy, _grandma_, he says.

Another bolt goes off, ricocheting off the metal of the wall. The _crossbow_. Buzzards don't use firearms much anymore. Nux tucked his head in, but he's laughing. Laughing. He's sure he'll be dead before he can stop. Volta, on the other hand, has the seriousness of a crow's cage. She steps towards the old woman to master her weapon, to tell her that she is not being attacked. Volta barks things in Russian and the granny does the same. An argument that turns into a mix of russian and bad slang that he understands a little bit.

— This is no food, Volta, _Dayu slovo _!

— He's not for eating. He's worth at least twenty batteries, _Babushka_. I'm going to the Citadel.

— _Konechno net_ !

She says that no one knows what the Citadel is like now. How are the people doing in there. She says they must wait. A few days. Let this madness end. She says the last of Gastown's officers are on the road. That she must not cross them. Volta snatched the crossbow out of her hands, and now it lies between the batteries. She comes back and she grabs the wheelbarrow.

— Volta, you not goin' ! _Ty ostanesh'sya zdes'_ !

And the old lady swears, and she screams, and she cries. And Volta pushes her load into the corridor as the storm passes over again. The old woman screams a last word of rage, something that sounds like "_NOVIC!_ " and then she smashes a button on the Lectricity control panel next to the door. Volta runs into the tunnel and the wheelbarrow is pitching. To the right, to the left, Nux grabs hold and nods his head as he watches her.

— Your _grammy, she's high-octane, _he says as they are speeding up at the risk of throwing him overboard.

Volta exhales, like a sigh. Like _a sadness_.

— She's not my _grammy_.

Her forehead is low over her black eyes where the glow of the Moths' larvae is reflecting.

— She was Matvei's. And Nislav's. Two who died the other day chasing the War-rig.

Nux isn't saying anything anymore. He's not laughing either. He was one of those who fought them, those Buzzard vehicles and their rusty carcasses. A Plymouth Rock, an Excavator. And he can't remember how many spiked bangers. Once they were blown up, the Immortan's armada took their place in pursuit of the tanker, right into that crazy storm now rumbling behind them. He was one of them. He never thought of the Buzzards as people. So he keeps quiet, and soon the door at the end of the corridor approaches, pouring orange light from outside. Volta is already scanning outside even though she's blinded as well. She clicks her tongue, this time nervously.

— She was Novic's grandmother too, she adds as they emerge in the daylight of the Storm Dunes outskirts. He'll be harder to convince than _Babushka_.

This guy stands there, his hand on the sharp spikes of his Staryytako. Not very tall but stocky as _body shoppers_ often are. His face is covered in Buzzard strips. His goggles protruding like horns. His boots are shod. He's lost two brothers at chasing the War-rig, maybe other fellows too. He stares them down. Volta. Her wheelbarrow. Nux. He raises the palms of his gloves to the sky as a sign of bewilderment, but the old woman is already shouting orders from the depths of the tunnel. Without blinking, without a word, Volta pulls the Ural out of its rock shelter and transfers the War Boy into the sidecar.

— What the hell, Volta ?, Novic tells her through his protective gear.

Far away in the stormy tumult, an electric arc struck the lightning rod again. Volta wraps her strips too, around her head, while Nux wedges his metal-circled leg across the sidecar. Avoiding the grenades case. More comfortable, now that the copper bag is no longer in his back.

— Obey her if you want, Volta says to Novic as she straps her goggles on and gets on her motorcycle.

Now that it's cooled down, the Ural stomps around as if it's just waiting to start moving. She throws the throttle, and as _high-octane Babushka_ comes out of the bunker brandishing her recovered crossbow, Novic dives into his Staryytako. The sand rises as the grandmother yells. And one second later, the ground starts scrolling under the sidecar in the thunder of its engine. Fast. Fast. Straight towards the track they came from.

This ride is probably the last, and Nux is aware of it. That incoercible acceleration to escape the assailant. That pinch that takes hold of the rib cage and goes up the throat. That speed that you don't bother to measure because it's never going to be fast enough. This is not his vehicle. It's not his Chevrolet, scattered somewhere on the other side of the storm after his fuel fiasco. He would have liked to drive, just one last time. But that will never happen again.

Novic doesn't intend to saw them down, the War Boy only needs a moment to understand that. He got to see a lot of Buzzards. Slit's blown up a lot of them, he's a good lancer. _He was_. Now he's dead, too, in this hellhole, and there are no Gates to Valhalla. Nux tucks his head into the sidecar again, while Volta roughly counter-brakes to get her fellow deported. This Buzzard guy has good skills, he turns away and back. He insists and so does she. He's not faster. And she's more mobile.

For a moment, Nux considers throwing one of the grenades at him. Volta guesses it and her sole meets his hand more than explicitly. This time it's not a kimbersnake they have on their heels. Instead, she decelerates suddenly. The inertia of the heaviest Staryytako takes it further, and Volta makes the Ural oblique to change direction in its back. Novic readjusts as she runs, he gets closer. Closer. Closer. If she does it again, he'll know how to anticipate. The more brilliant the manoeuvres, the more the War Boy raves about them. Volta blows under his scarf. This time, she's the one laughing in the biting wind.

Then she turns over and stares at Novic through the void where his windshield used to be, riding at his side. They rush in, again, again. They're a mirror of each other despite the difference in their gears. Volta waits for the right moment, her smile hidden by her strips. Then she finally makes a gesture towards Novic. A sign, like a hundred times before. Just like in the Pass. She joins her thumb and her index finger. _I'm okay_, she means. And they roll neck and neck again for a while, as if the Buzzard was weighing his decision._ Five seconds_, just like a grenade. _Four, three, two, one_.

Finally, all of a sudden, Novic moves away and the spikes are not on them anymore. Away. Away. Northeast. He gives up, and Nux pretends to be disappointed. Probably the grammy will tear him to pieces for that. He raises his bald head scratched by the copper shear and he exults again with exhausted joy while Volta resumes the course she had planned.

— This is definitely a lovely day, he whispers to himself.

They ride, they ride. In the distance, both at the infinite horizon and within reach the tiny reliefs of the Citadel towers are in sight.


	7. Up

The Ural is on a straight course, now. Regular, comfortable, nothing like on the rough ground of the Badlands. The Road, the Fury Road. The one used by convoys loaded with Guzzolene, Aquacola, bullets and all the Productions. The one the Buzzards have so often attacked. In the rear-view mirror, far away, Gastown's columns of smoke rise and fade on the wide blue sky. And in front of their tires, miles away, the Citadel peaks; its three mineral towers topped with the green of their crops. No vehicles from the refineries are in sight. Neither at the front nor at the back. Only the ground scrolling, scrolling in beige and ochre hatching.

It's been more than ten minutes since Nux has said anything, and Volta looks at him through the corner of her goggles. He's looking down on the road below, over the retracted spikes of the sidecar. This silence does not please her. Now she knows enough not to like it.

— Are you dead already, _glupyy_ ?

He shakes his head several times and moves his leg, probably uncomfortable because of the metal splint.

— I'm fine. Going great.

That's what he says, but there's an abnormal distance in his eyes. Volta speeds up but the Ural can't go any faster. The only thing she wants is that he doesn't fall asleep, so she backfires the engine.

— The platforms are in sight, she says, and those words seem to stir up some of the adrenaline he has left.

— Tower One, he says. That's where we need to be lifted up.

He forces himself to sit down without slouching and allows himself to be exhilarated by what he sees. Closer, closer. At any given moment, the Citadel seems within reach.

— The Millrats are the ones who make the Wheels turn, but it is the Lifters that we have to convince to take us up. They choose.

— We'll hang on.

This statement turns the War Boy's gaze to Volta. _Hanging_ _on_. For the first time since they stormed out, he laughs. And as if to wake up his machines as much as those of the Ural, he starts banging on the side of the sidecar. Volta rushes. Again and again, and little by little the shapes become clearer. The Three Towers, the ridge crops and hydroponic bays, the cranes planted on the heights like so many black thorns. The huge screaming skull carved in stone, the symbol of the deceased Immortan. And the water that – suddenly as they approach – cascades down from the black mouths connected to the great pumps of the Aquifer. Like a long white strip, the Aquacola pours out. Down towards a crowd that they guess to be large, more people than ever. The human mass invades the centre of the Towers, all around the Citadel and even into the desert. There, they slowly distinguish a profusion of vehicules. Of all kinds. From all horizons. The tanks of the Gastown Polecats are there, the rumors had not lied to _Babushka_. But also many caterpillars from the Bullet Farm and cars of all kinds, coming out of they-even-don't-know-where. It's just as if every hole in the ground had released living beings that had been holding up for too long. A tide of humans whose clamour can be heard even through the V8s.

— That's crazy.

Nux's posture, leaning forward over the mechanical scarifications he inflicted on himself, is explicit. He's never seen anything like this here before.

— That's totally crazy.

They make their way through the stopped vehicles that their occupants have left without really worrying about them being stolen in the mechanical density. Closer, closer, until they can no longer move forward without risking crushing the fringes of the crowd. Wretched people, starving and riddled with tumours, as there have always been, but other faces, other gaits. Women, men, children. One of them is carrying a crow. Even some old people. Bins, jerry cans, kettledrums. Volta stops the engine of the Ural and they both stand in a moment of astonishment, watching what the Wasteland had never known.

Suddenly, Volta looks on her side. She's just felt it close to her motorbike. A little _presence_. A child. Skinny, already almost hairless. A little kid with blue eyes. He'll probably have a lot to deal with in the reverberation too if he lives long enough. He's standing next to the burning Ural, staring at them, not moving. Volta doesn't take her strips off, nor her goggles. But suddenly, without really thinking about what she's doing, with the crowd passing on either side of them, she plunges her hand through the buzzard clothes. Right into her pocket from which she pulls the _Ford_ she picked up in the Pass. From her knuckles, she makes it shine a little. And then she sends it into the kid's hands, red from having dipped his fingers in the earthy water. He looks at it. He weighs it, then he smiles. _Chrome_.

— Babba !

Nux raises his head. The kid runs away and disappears into the crowd towards a woman they can't see. The parade of jugs resumes, other motorcycles arrive and line up near the Ural Buzzard that they would normally have blown up. With her hand, Volta closes the case of grenades and locks it up. Then, on a single impulse, she stands on her feet.

— Let's go, she says as she frees her curly hair from her rags.

The strips are sent to the bottom of the side bag: now Volta could be anyone. It's time. It's more than time, and she pulls Nux out of the sidecar with his prosthesis which alone helps him stand. One resolute breath and she puts her head under his arm for support. It doesn't matter if he's taller, nor if the whole thing is shaky. The number of steps they have to take is less than a hundred.

— The Iskra provided the glass for the Dome up there, she says with a chin movement towards the heights.

A haven of pure water and filtered air. An engineering marvel of metal and blown silica that is said to house _books_. Volta looks up as they wobble through the jubilant human mass.

— It's a sanctuary, she says.

— It's a prison.

Nux won't say any more. He's focusing on his steps now, and Volta would swear he can't really see around him anymore. He's only got one shoe on, she hadn't even noticed. Anyway, his feet are as hard as the tires of shoe soles. Over there, the Wretched have set up tents. At the foot of the falls, they began to channel the clear water with custom pipes. Against Tower One, a tattooist at a table is writing on a man's skin. Words, many words, as if he was recording stories and facts. Volta raises her head, now feeling crushed by the height of the Citadel that stands out against the sky. By the heavy clicking sound of the chains lifting up and down the platforms. By the rolling of the wheels trampled by the Millrats.

— What are you going to ask for?, she hears at her shoulder, and Nux stumbles, closer, closer to the dock platform.

Again, he seems lucid and traces of that mischievous enthusiasm are back upon him. You can have as much Aquacola as you want. Ask for milk. Grain. You can carry.

— Shut up.

She is now struggling under his weight too. She's willing to bet that she and the prosthesis are doing the work now.

— You can ask for Guzzolene. The Ural, she'll purr like a –

— Shut the fuck up, Nux.

All of a sudden, she drops him and his elbows meet the platform slats. Under a fabric mask, a Lifter leans over. He shouts "War Boy! "and several bald and powdered kids – grease to the top of their foreheads – pull their once-fellow further on the platform. Suddenly Volta feels light and paradoxally heavy. Behind them, the water flows down and down. And as she steps back, the Lifter orders to the poor pulley-men:

— Up !

Nux manages to sit down but the platform moves and he falls back down.

— Your reward, Buzzard!

In his voice, there is anger but mostly astonishment. The platform goes up, up. Now she would have to jump. The crane pivots. The structure gives a jolt.

— Your reward...

And the prosthesis, which she hasn't got back. Underneath, Volta looks up as the platform rises, rises, up to three times her height above. She's got words in Russian, she's not sure if the slang can say them too. She shrugs her shoulders. And lifting her hands at the sides of her mouth, overcoming the tremendous noise of this rebirth, she says to him:

— I don't give a shit!

What she will remember is to see him rise, rise, more slumped at every moment on what drives him upward, towards the distant heights of the Citadel. Where he wanted to go, where the gates have just opened for him. Where _he's not awaited_. Volta has already turned around, she won't look any further, she doesn't need to. She splits the crowd. Heavy. Light. At the sound of the chains stopping, she knows he's arrived. He may survive an hour, a day, several. So will Larry and Barry.

No matter how long now.

_"Where must we go we who wander this wasteland in search of our better selves ?"_


End file.
